Interconnectivity
by Nirav
Summary: Or, Five People Nina May or May Not Have Slept With, and One She Definitely Did .


**Anita was a cheerleader.**

Cheerleaders and artsy kids didn't mix in high school. But they rode the same bus freshman year, and a month after Christmas Anita's family moved into her neighborhood, six houses down. They had a quiet friendship, limited to nods and casual conversation at school, only to talk for hours upon end at home.

It was two weeks before senior prom when Anita kissed her for the first time. They were sprawled on the floor in Anita's bedroom, Dishwalla pulsing out of the speakers and in the middle of a conversation about SAT scores when there were suddenly lips pressed against hers that tasted like raspberry lip gloss and a trembling hand brushing against her cheek.

Anita was a brown-eyed redhead, and irresistible. One kiss lead to two weeks of exploration and escalation, culminating in Anita grabbing her by the wrist at the prom and dragging her out of the ballroom and upstairs to a hotel room while their dates stood around dumbly downstairs. She would never quite be able to forget the way that Anita's eyes deepened to the color of dark chocolate, how sweaty red hair looked plastered against her forehead, how Anita's athletic form arched up under her lips. How Anita smiled shyly down at her as a hand traveled from blonde hair and further down, kissing her sweetly and softly.

A month later and graduation came and went. She left for a pre-college art program in New York, and Anita went with her family to travel around Spain and Italy and France for a month, and as suddenly as it had started, it was over. She wasn't sad and she didn't mourn the relationship, and was happy when she heard from a friend that Anita was engaged. Yet, for years, no matter where she was or who she was with, she would still wake up from the occasional dream of a brown-eyed redhead in a blue cheerleading uniform.

**There was a boy at art school.**

His name was Kyle, and he was a mediocre painter. They had some classes together in the first years of school, developing a pleasant wave-and-greet relationship; as school wore on, she moved up in the school and he stayed stuck. His grades were average, his art forgettable. The only thing remarkable about him was his hair, which was inexplicably fabulous.

She was not the type to notice a guy's hair. In the past, she had frowned at guys who spent more time styling their hair than she did; she had dumped a boyfriend in high school solely because of his inability to appear in public without his hair gelled and styled just so. She liked simple guys with simple hair.

But there was something about Kyle and his shaggy black hair that she couldn't escape. He reminded her a little of Harry Potter, and for some reason, it was like a magnet. When she saw him, she wanted nothing more than to wrap herself around him and twist her fingers in his inexplicably fabulous hair. She had fantasies about him from time to time, when she was single and lonely and alone in her small bedroom, when she would lock the door to keep her niece out and turn up the music to drown out the noise and imagine him fucking her over one of the drafting tables at school, her fingers tangled in his inky black hair to draw him in for a kiss that would push them both to coming as hard as every artist wanted people to think they came.

Instead of a drafting table and a single encounter, they had a month of sleepless nights at his tiny apartment. No strings, no attachments, no problems. She couldn't remember how it started, because they were certainly not friends, but somehow they evolved into something akin to lovers, and she could wrap her fingers in his hair and yank him down for a long, slow, smoldering kiss whenever she wanted. There was no sex on drafting tables, but there was plenty in his bed, and against the walls in his apartment, and the couch, and in the handicap bathroom at school.

Years later, long after it had ended amicably when he found his soul mate or something, she still kept his Harry Potter hair filed away in the back of her mind for nights when she was single and alone, allowing herself to indulge in that one fantasy of drawing table affairs that never quite was finished

**She met a girl named Faith in a bar.**

It was like every clichéd romance novel she'd read as a child-- the ones she filched from her sister when she bored and had read all of her own books and didn't have a ride to the library. A long day of inventory at work, a philosophical disagreement with her boss about a sculpture, and a wall of dirty water thrown up by a passing car and sloshing over her calves while she ran had prompted her to cut her jog short and duck into a bar four blocks from home. She sat sulking at the bar, wallowing in the squelching feel in her dripping running shoes, and peeled the label off of her beer bottle methodically and with a suppressed violence she didn't think she actually had in her.

After her third beer and Mike the bartender's second halfhearted attempt to hit on her-- held off only by the overhanging threat of termination from his boss if he scared off regular customers with monthly tabs-- she saw someone flop bonelessly onto a stool two seats away from her, rapping on the bar and pointing at the bottle of Maker's Mark with a grunt.

After her fourth beer, she was caught staring at the brunette two stools down, who offered a confident half-smirk and a slow, appraising up-and-down glance. "What's up, goldilocks?" preceded a cocky wink and the brunette hopping off her stool and making her way gracefully down the bar.

After her sixth beer, she found herself flustered and blushing, heat radiating across her cheeks and down her neck in spite of the chill still pressing against her bones from her splash of water earlier. The opening music to Monday Night Football rang out from the TV behind the bar, and she grabbed at the excuse of timing and work and it being later than she thought; she offered what she hoped was a not-too-flustered smile at the woman next to her, waved to Mike, and made her way onto the sidewalk. She was a block away when she started, as the brunette from the bar fell casually into step next to her, keeping pace with her athletic jog even in jeans and boots and a steady and warm rain.

Two blocks after that, she was struggling to realize how she had wound up in a surprisingly clean alleyway, damp and cold brick pressing against her back and damp and oh-so-warm brunette pressed against her front, their fingers tied together and the brunette pushing her arms out and against the wall behind her while scorching lips made their way down her neck.

Somewhere after the first time in the alley and before she let a brunette stranger with smoky eyes and an understated smirk take her home and to bed, between the first and second round of shuddering breaths and arching spines, she managed to gasp out her name. It felt painfully important that there be names involved in this. A breathy moan was drawn out of her as unbelievably skilled fingers traced softly around her hip, up her side, along her ribcage and then back down down down; just as she was about to tumble over the edge, there were lips pressed against her ear, breathing heavily. As her body convulsed and trembled for the second time in ten minutes, a heartbreakingly tender kiss was pressed to the corner of her jaw, and a name was whispered in her ear.

**He was a lawyer. She hated lawyers.**

Two days before she would lock herself up for her first full moon cycle at Wolfram and Hart, Angel gave her a tour. After he showed her the saferoom she would be caged in at night, they strolled around the unbelievable building, and eventually wound up in his office. She marveled at the array of weaponry behind his desk, and she could tell that he enjoyed telling her about each one.

As he was replacing the katana from showing her how to hold it, there was a knock on the door. Harmony dragged him away for an emergency meeting with Spike about something or another, and he promised he'd be right back. She stood at the windows tiredly, staring out across the city, and jumped when the door opened behind her.

He was looking for Angel to sign some papers, he explained politely. His name was Mark and he was beautiful-- too beautiful to be a lawyer, she thought. Except he was a lawyer, a tax attorney from Stanford Law with short-cropped brown hair and twinkling grey eyes and the build of a triathlete.

She saw him the next month, and he asked her out for coffee. She turned him down, explaining about the werewolf; he smiled charmingly and asked her out again. The last morning of the cycle, he brought her pancakes and eggs and bacon and a cup of coffee, sitting on the floor with her and chatting comfortably about his childhood; she ate and smiled and laughed and marveled at how casually he could sit on the floor of a cage in a thousand dollar suit.

He stood to leave, gathering the remains of breakfast, and she was halfway through thanking him when he leaned forward and kissed her, his hands full of breakfast trays. She froze for all of ten seconds, and he kissed her again, and she gave in to his charm and his clear grey eyes and the breakfast he'd brought her; the flatware tumbled out of his hands and onto the floor, his hands fumbling with the tie on her bathrobe.

He was gentle and considerate, a gentleman by all definitions. He took her out to dinner and brought her flowers at home; he charmed her sister and niece; he admitted no knowledge of art but an extensive knowledge of music, and took her to an art show one night and an opera the next.

He died six weeks after the first time he brought her breakfast in her cage, in a plain and simple and entirely human mugging gone bad. She went to his funeral and laid a rose on his casket and hated that she didn't feel as sad as she knew she should.

**She could barely walk for two days after she woke up with Gunn.**

They were drunk, and they were alone, and they wound up at his apartment at three in the morning. She was stumbling on one too many drinks of Stoli, and he was smiling nostalgically into space after three too many scotches. She stood from the couch to leave, and he walked her to the door, and she was halfway out into the hall he spun her around tipsily and she grabbed his tie and pulled him against her for a kiss. The effect was instantaneous, his huge hands wrapping around her hips and pulling her back into the apartment as she kicked the door shut behind her.

He was as drunk as she was, she knew, but that didn't seem to affect his coordination, because she suddenly found herself being lifted up into his arms. Her legs wrapped around his waist automatically, the kiss never stopping, and he stumbled blindly to his bed.

She had never been a particularly vocal bedmate, but it was no surprise to her that someone like him could make her scream. He straddled the line between attentive and animalistic perfectly, pounding into her hard enough to actually crack his headboard without ever making her feel anything but indeterminably good. She fell asleep with his arm slung loosely over her waist, his breath comforting on the back of her neck, and woke up an hour later to his lips tracing a path down her stomach. He paused when she inhaled sharply at the soft bite of teeth on her hipbone, and smiled up at her cheekily before continuing on.

He wasn't thinking about her when her legs were resting on his shoulders, her hands clenching at his sheets; she wasn't thinking about him when her breath hitched and her hips strained upward, her short nails scraping down the ridged lines of muscle on his back. She didn't comment when she heard Fred's name muttered under his breath as she took her turn on top, and he didn't say a word when he had to have heard Angel's name tripping from her lips as he had her one last time in the shower.

She left his apartment with a cup of coffee in one hand and a blueberry Pop Tart in the other and four Advil in her stomach to compensate for the terrifically painful and perfectly wonderful soreness stretching through her body.

**She had Angel for one night.**

And what a night it was. She didn't know quite how it happened, but what mattered was that it did, and it was so entirely worth it. For a guy who hadn't had sex in years, he sure didn't seem to be out of practice, that was for sure.

They didn't sleep the whole night. The first time was rushed, clothes flying off and her leg hooking around his hip and him falling onto her and into her and light exploding in her head as he slammed into her repeatedly, the both of them grasping the headboard for leverage. The second time was slower, heart rates slowed down and gentle fingers sliding along hypersensitive skin. The third time was on the couch when she'd gone to get a glass of water and he followed, the fourth an hour later.

Between, they talked. He told her about Buffy and perfect happiness, and Cordelia and Darla and Connor. She told him about art school and how it felt to transform. They reminisced on fear and pain, what it was like to have a monster inside that would always want to break loose.

He admitted his worry about his curse and taking her to bed; she confessed the fear that woke her from sleep every night, that she'd transformed without a new moon and mauled her sister and niece in their sleep. He told her what Wesley had said about perfect happiness, and she told him that maybe perfect happiness was boring and real happiness was actually happiness in imperfection. He smiled and kissed her and her hands wandered and when they were done it was eight AM and almost time for him to get to work and the brooding crease in his forehead had finally returned.

She had him one last time, slow and languid and extraordinary, because she knew what was coming. When he told her she needed to leave town to stay safe, a quiet part of her accepted it immediately, for all that her voice argued. She knew why he needed her to leave, and an even smaller part of her knew that this had been their one moment that would never come again.

She left him to his war, and got her family to safety. For the rest of her years, she would remember her one night of happiness in imperfection, two cursed people ignoring fate for a single night and remembering what it meant to be human, why people had souls to begin with.

She had him and she lost him. He left a hole in her heart that would never really heal, but she was okay with that. Real happiness was happiness in imperfection, after all, and imperfection necessitated pain.


End file.
